GM Blames UAW for EV-free CES

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems

Could we have fit more acronyms in that headline? Doubtful.

Now safely ensconced in a four-year labour deal with the workers who left its assembly lines in the dark for six weeks, General Motors is blaming this fall’s strike for a product delay. Well, a delay of a debut, really.

As a result, next month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas will have to do without a new GM electric vehicle.

A high point of the year for tech nerds (and increasingly, automakers eager to show off their latest electronic wizardry), CES 2020 was to feature a GM electric car; now, its big reveal is being pushed back to a later date.

Speaking to MotorTrend, GM spokesman Tony Cervone said, “We had a plan to go to CES and frankly we can’t go to CES without putting our best foot forward and we could not get the models done that we wanted to get done with the strike, frankly,” adding, “We had a plan, we worked like hell,” but things didn’t come together.

The strike restricted access to GM facilities, complicating things further.

The exact nature of the model is still a mystery, though there are two strong candidates: a self-driving Chevy Bolt-based vehicle created by GM’s Cruise division, or the unnamed Cadillac EV crossover teased last January. Given that there’s already invites floating around for a January Cruise event, it’s likely the Caddy.

GM is expected to foist new capabilities on its Super Cruise driver-assist feature, and a place like CES would be just the place to reveal it. Having such technology appear on a production-bound electric model would be an ideal setup for the trade show.

Whatever name Cadillac decides to bestow upon it, and it will be a real name, Caddy’s EV crossover is expected to land in 2021.

[Image: General Motors]

Steph Willems
Steph Willems

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  • Akear Akear on Dec 19, 2019

    All GM seems to do today is either sue or make excuses. They are now suing Hyundai because they are afraid a former employee is sharing autonomous technology with them.

  • Art Vandelay Art Vandelay on Dec 19, 2019

    So, I follow the CES to see what new graphics card Nvidia has coming out, how fast AMD's new processors are, how Motorola is fitting a smartphone display into a flip phone form factor...things like that. I really don't care about cars there unless it is one of those deals were someone has put a Tesla like screen in a Third gen Camaro or something. I won't lose any sleep over this.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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